Eduardo Wolle, Narrator Wayne Eddy KYMN Radio Interviewer October 27, 2006 At KYMN Radio Station Northfield, Minnesota October 27, 2006 WE: Hey good morning, good morning, welcome back to the Wayne Eddy Affair on KYMN Radio. Eduardo Wolle is my guest KYMN but I do want to say congratulations to the Rice County Historical Society… [Wayne takes this time to thank the key note speakers and the coordinator of the annual meeting of the Rice County Historical Society.] WE: Ok, we’re back with Eduardo Wolle, we’ve got him in Northfield. Let’s see, you’ve got all these different jobs with government agencies, the Carleton College, and then you ended up at OSHA. EW: Well actually, after the Spanish Speaking Affairs Council I took a job with the Department of Labor and Industry as the assistant to the commissioner. In that capacity I was the legislative liaison, shall we say, for the department. WE: Of? EW: Of labor and industry. WE: Alright, now I would imagine that you probably hooked up with John Tuma on occasions. EW: Yes, yes I knew John when he was in the legislature. WE: Ok, John Tuma was an attorney here in town and a former legislator who chose not to run after two terms. And he is a specialist with…EW: He did worker’s compensation in his private practice. So I knew that as well but I spent about a year and a half within the department. From there I was moved, they liked me so much they wanted to make me permanent; so this was a political appointment I had through the governor’s office and I moved into the area of worker’s compensation as a mediator, arbitrator in that area. WE: Now, you appear to me to be a pretty mellow fellow, as we say, and you seem to me to be the type that would fight for the underdog and in that position with that department was your job to keep people honest or to get people taxpayer’s money?EW: My job, within the department, if you’re talking about the worker’s compensation piece [laughter].WE: Yes, which other one could I have been talking about?EW: Well, because the one I had before was the legislative liaison but then I moved into the worker’s compensation one. Within the worker’s compensation field I was a mediator, arbitrator and my job was to be a neutral in deciding cases under the arbitration piece of worker’s compensation cases. Under the mediation piece it was working with parties that hadn’t tried to settle their claims or come to agreements regarding specifics of those claims. WE: Now are these claims against the state of Minnesota or are they private companies? EW: No, no, insurance companies. WE: Oh, ok. EW: Yes, this would be for instance the filing of a rehabilitation request for services of a qualified rehab consultant and let’s say the insurance company doesn’t think that the employee is a qualified employee to receive those benefits. So, that kind of a case would come to me either as an arbitrator or a mediator. That’s kind of the cases that would come to me. WE: Were you an advocate for either side? EW: No, no I couldn’t be an advocate. WE: Ok, what are some of the stories that you can tell? I mean, give me a story, obviously not names, but give me a story about somebody that was being denied dollars or services or medical help or employment or whatever that big, tough insurance companies were denying and they were right that you had to get in there and help that person. EW: You’re putting me on the spot there. There are so many stories and I’m trying to narrow it down to just one and I just can’t right off hand. WE: Ok, give me a story where you went out with cameras and you watched this guy climb a tree and saw limbs and then come into the unemployment office with crutches and take his money. EW: [Laughter] We didn’t do that. Didn’t do that. WE: You’ve got stories like that though, don’t you? EW: We would have stories where an insurance company would claim that an employee was able to do more than what they were doing. Because of their injury, they were claiming that they couldn’t do certain things and the insurance company claimed that they had surveillance on them. We’d get those every so often. I didn’t usually see the tapes, we didn’t really get a lot of those; those were the kinds of cases that tended to go higher up into the office of Administrative Hearings because they were more complicated. We were the first line of defense on the issues of worker’s compensation where the insurer would file what are called either a medical request, which was up to fifteen-thousand dollars, and then there were what are called rehab requests as well. WE: What do you mean fifteen-thousand dollars? EW: In medical bills. So if an employee had injuries and had a lot of medical bills, we had jurisdiction up to a certain amount and then after that amount that jurisdiction would transfer over to the office of Administrative Hearings. WE: But you would decide whether the insurance companies should pay or not pay? EW: Correct. Based on the preponderance of the evidence that was presented to us by both sides. WE: But if they have a bill? EW: It gets more complicated than that. It could be an issue of whether the treatment was reasonable and necessary, which is usually what the insurance company was indicating that they didn’t think that the treatment might be reasonable and necessary. For instance, chiropractic care, and insurer could say, “This is way beyond the treatment parameters and we don’t want to be paying for this anymore.” So they would send a letter to the employee saying that they’re not going to pay for this anymore. The employee would either seek out an attorney who would call the department and either present the case themselves or have the attorney present the case. WE: Or being treated for pre-existing conditions? EW: That could happen as well. A pre-existing condition that the employee had claimed as part of an injury and then it was found out that it was the pre-existing condition. But that gets more complicated, it depends on if that injury aggravates that injury or not, so that gets a little bit more complicated. WE: These are all on-the-job injuries? EW: Yes, these are all on-the-job injuries. WE: Alright, what was the most ludicrous claim where somebody made, like, “I need ten thousand dollars for my left fingernail,” or something like that? EW: No, one was a mediation that I was doing where the parties were very far apart. I was working with both parties to try to work something out but it was very difficult because one party wanted several million dollars and the other party was willing to pay five thousand dollars. WE: And what was the injury?
EW: There were some psychological, there were some other injuries, burns, I think, that had happened at some point. But they were in discussion that the problem was trying to work with the one party that wanted several millions to explain that wasn’t that type of an injury that you get that type of money. And in worker’s compensation, you don’t see that, even if there’s a death you don’t see millions and millions of dollars. WE: Now do these parties have lawyers that come in and argue for them? EW: Sometimes, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they are just the individual. WE: And what percentage do you think are just setups to get money to rob the bank, take advantage of? EW: Very, very few. WE: Really? EW: Yes, when you’re looking at the cases you can tell how legitimate the case is. There were a lot of legitimate cases, there were some that with some of the medical ones might be crossing the line a little; with the employees that we saw, there were very few. There were issues of treatment that they were getting; it was about usually when we were dealing with the medical requests. So I didn’t see those as…there are a lot of rumors out there of people milking the system, I didn’t see that. WE: Now, what job are we talking about? Where are we at? EW: [Laughing] We’re at the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, I’m a mediator, arbitrator at this point. WE: Are you a consultant or are you full time? EW: I’m full time. WE: Now, when you work for a government body, there are all kinds of perks for retirement and health insurance and all of that. So did your job working as an appointee of the governor’s council and you worked within the legislature. EW: That was only for a year and a half. WE: Ok, now was that a government job where you could add those years to your service to the state of Minnesota? EW: Yes, correct. WE: Ok, so you don’t lose that? EW: Right. That was an unclassified position, what I became when I moved into the mediator, arbitrator position was a classified position within the state. WE: And there’s the old thing called the high five? EW: Yes. WE: Yes, the high five is? EW: Your highest number that you’ve reached with your salary. WE: Yes, and you know you could get a cut in pay this year, but you take the last one’s raise. And that’s what your retirement is based on and benefits. EW: Yes, correct. WE: And so, now that we’re done with it, do you have any other stories that you can tell? EW: Well, the department…you wanted to know about OSHA as well. WE: What year was it that you were working…you were working with Arnie Carlson, I’m trying to figure it out, did you ever have to work with Jesse? EW: No, by that point I wasn’t a government [unclear] appointment. I was just a state employee, working away. WE: At? EW: The Department of Labor and Industry. WE: Oh. EW: But at that point I spent from, what was it, 1993 was when I was there, it was thirteen years with the department. WE: Oh wow, time flies. I just can’t get over it, you know. How long ago did you work with KYMN Radio on the air? EW: That was in 1994 I think, starting in ’94, it was about seven years with KYMN. WE: But it was twelve years ago. EW: Yes. WE: Ok. It’s seventeen minutes after ten o’clock. Our guest here on KYMN Radio is Eduardo Wolle and we’re bringing him up to date and what he’s up to right now, a lot of various interesting jobs and a lot of interesting background. And by the way Eduardo, you’d be proud of me, I did watch a special on the Panama Canal and during that special they were talking about mega structures or modern marvels and it’s amazing that, that thing was built way back when and when they didn’t have the equipment that they have today. The amount of debris or junk they can clean out of that canal with this, well we’ll say steam shovel. EW: That’s what it was. WE: That steam shovel could scoop, in one scoop, more than back in 1913 or whenever they started it, it could do it in a week or something like that. EW: Yes. WE: It’s amazing. But now I understand where you are from. Ok, an interesting little country that separates the two. EW: Yes, once they dug the ditch, the big ditch, they kind of separated the South America from the rest of the America. It’s connecting Columbia, South America with Central America and North America. WE: Now did you know Nicaragua? Or not Nicaragua, what’s his name? The guy with the face. EW: [unclear]. [Laughter]. WE: The guy with the … EW: Yes, that’s it. [Unclear]. WE: That’s the pineapple face? EW: Yes, that’s the pineapple face. Noriega. WE: Noriega. EW: No, I didn’t know Noriega. WE: You didn’t know him? EW: No, I didn’t know him. Sorry. WE: What an idiot he was. You know what I don’t understand was some of these people that get millions of dollars want tens of millions and those that have tens of millions want hundreds of millions of dollars. EW: It’s called greed. WE: Yes, you know, give me a million bucks and I’ll be happy. EW: Well, we always want a little bit more sometimes. WE: Of course I used to say that when I was fourteen, nowadays…EW: A million won’t buy you much. WE: No, it’s amazing. We’re going to take a break. We’ll come back and we’ll bring you up to date on Eduardo Wolle, a Northfield resident, who’s served on our Northfield school board for a number of years and that’s our connection. [At this point there is a commercial break.] WE: Eduardo, you’re keeping time to that music with…do that on the microphone there. EW: [Eduardo makes a sound using his hands keeping in time with the music announcing the show’s return from the commercial break]. WE: So, where did you learn how to do that? EW: High school. WE: Bored? EW: Music. Remember, music major. WE: Oh, ok. Squeezing his hands together making that noise, I could’ve said squeezing his cheeks but no. So Eduardo, on this one job we’re at, OSHA, I call it OSHA. EW: Yes, I know you do, Department of Labor and Industry. WE: Ok, any interesting things you can tell us about that? EW: Yes, I did a lot of different things. I didn’t just do worker’s compensation; some of the things that I did was OSHA. OSHA would bring me in to work with them when they’d go out into the field to find out injuries that had happened, either catastrophic, where there was a death or amputations. Typically the one’s that I’d go for with them were Hispanics who’d been either killed or had a limb amputated. So, I’d go out to translate with OSHA. And so when I was either out on an inspection with them, if there was just an inspection that they were doing, and it was a high number of Hispanics in the plant, for instance meat packing plants, the turkey plants, I’d go with OSHA interpreting. If it was an issue of a death or an amputation I’d go out with OSHA as well to do interpreting for them. That wasn’t really part of my duties as worker’s compensation, as a person within that area but I felt it was beneficial to go along and help OSHA to get a better idea of what was happening with either the workers or the one who’d been injured. WE: The purpose of OSHA is to see if any safety rules were broken and accidents do happen. EW: Yes, and there were some really bad accidents that I went to with OSHA. WE: What about an undocumented worker at Hormel or something or Faribault at the turkey place? Did they get the benefits that American taxpayers or companies are paying into? Did the undocumented workers get to take advantage of any compensation? EW: If somebody who is undocumented is injured on the job, state law allows people who are injured to receive benefits because they are technically working here whether documented or undocumented. So, there are benefits that you would get. But at some point, there is a debate as far as whether other ongoing benefits are…that undocumented are able to get, for instance, one would be temporary/partial disability benefits, which is if you return back to work and you’re getting less than what you were making at the time of injury, one of the questions is, and I don’t think the Supreme Court has had this one yet, is whether an undocumented is able to receive those kinds of benefits. The other one that has been discussed is the issue of qualified rehab consultants receiving an undocumented who comes in for a consultation and then the placement of that person in that job; there’s a big debate about that, whether it’s a “tell, don’t tell” kind of thing because the qualified rehab consultant can’t say, “Wayne do you have papers or not,” unless they are asking everybody. So those are kind of the issues that you get into. WE: So, basically, a non-existing person can be in the public trough, at the public trough? EW: Well, actually it’s not the public trough because the state isn’t paying for that. The insurance company is the one that’s paying for it. WE: So the insurance company can be paying somebody something, a person that does not even exist in this country, a non-entity? EW: Well, they exist but they’re not recorded. Again, legal documentation is one thing and that’s what we caution people about, be very careful that when they are judging whether somebody’s a documented or undocumented, especially qualified rehab consultants. WE: And whatever you do, if somebody comes to apply for a job that looks different from you, do not ask them anything. EW: No, you really can’t but what you can ask is for the papers. I mean one of the things that employers need to be doing, of course, is to be asking for papers to find out if the person is documented or not. WE: Could I ask you? EW: I can show you papers. WE: I mean your Panamanian and American. EW: Yes. WE: Ok, so you are half Latino? EW: Yes. WE: You appear Norwegian. You know just for the sake of this. EW: [Laughing] Ok put me in that area, that’s fine. WE: I mean nobody would guess you for a Latino. EW: No, they wouldn’t. WE: Ok, so if you apply for a job and I was the boss, if you appeared Latino, I might ask you for your papers. EW: And you’d have to be doing that for just about everybody. For instance…WE: Yes, but if I asked, the way you look right now, if I asked you for your papers, it would be… EW: I don’t think that’s a problem because there are people who are undocumented who are Irish, Canadian, people that look like you and me. WE: So everybody should be asked? EW: I think so and actually they do. For instance, when I was on the planning commission for the county, I was asked for my papers, documentation that I was a legal citizen here in the United States. I had to bring my passport and that kind of thing. WE: How much do you get for a lower left leg? EW: [Laughing] Oh boy, I can’t remember the amount. It’s based on percentage of the whole body and depending on where the amputation would have happened, I don’t know without going to the schedule. There’s a schedule which has that out. WE: Left, right does it make a difference? Well, if you’re right handed it’d be more valuable than left handed? EW: Yes, it can be but again it’s based on the whole body, so if you lost your left hand, lost a right hand, it’s probably about the same. But again without going to the schedule, I don’t know off the top of my head. WE: Ok, so they have an ear, a nose, and an eye? EW: Everything. All sorts of different things that could happen. WE: Tooth? EW: Yes. WE: Toe? EW: Yes, I’ve dealt with all of that. Lots of different things. WE: Ok. Oh man, now where should I go? It’s 10:30a.m. here on KYMN Radio. Ok, now, let’s get you out of there. EW: Ok. WE: Let’s get you to, when did you run for school board? EW: In 1994, I believe it was. WE: And how many terms did you serve? EW: I was on three terms for ten years. WE: How did you enjoy that? EW: I liked it. It was interesting to do public policy. I enjoyed working with the members of the school board, we didn’t always see eye to eye but we were very respectful of each other, we had really good debates that dealt with the issues and not personalities. That to me, in public service is very critical to being able to get the confidence of the public as well as your board members. WE: Do you think there are “siders” on school boards? EW: Siders? WE: Well, siders would be administration, teachers, and physical plants. In other words, would you probably be more prone to give a raise to the teachers than let’s say one of your cohorts? EW: You mean a raise to one of my board members as opposed to the teachers or what? WE: No, what I mean is…I don’t know how to say it. EW: Ok, just say it. WE: You know what I mean don’t you? EW: What we would do was… WE: Your bleeding heart, you want to give everything to everybody as much as you can. EW: I believe that, again, public policy was what dictated what the board did and bleeding heart or conservative; I think people looked at the issues and made decisions based on the information that was presented to them. Yes, we did give increases, but those were based on information, again, that had negotiations. It wasn’t just, “Let’s give you this amount,” there was give and take in that. And I know, unless you’ve served on the school board, it’s typical to look at it and say, “Gosh that was fair,” or, “that wasn’t fair,” but I think that the board always had to make the best decision possible given the information that it had. WE: On Monday, Charlie Kyte, is going to be my guest. EW: Oh yes, excellent. WE: Why is that superintendents of schools have been in the news a lot in the last year? And why is it that school boards are so generous in regards to golden parachutes or whatever you want to call them? I mean where they can store sick days and store vacation days and when they quit they end up with almost a year’s pay it seems in addition. Why do you, why do school boards do that? Aren’t there enough qualified people? EW: I guess it depends on the negotiations again for that school board. I wouldn’t be able to speak for the other school boards and how they negotiated it. It depends on how badly they want that individual and what they are willing to give up for that in those negotiations. WE: Now do the superintendents themselves negotiate it or do they have a representative that gets stuff for them? EW: Usually, for us down here, it’s been typically the superintendent that would negotiate with the board and we would work out a package with them with our representative and so that would come to the board and we’d have a vote on whether we accepted that package or not. WE: So should there be a psychologist on the board so that they can look at that applicant and say, “You know what guys, he really wants this job, don’t forget him,” or, “You know what, this guy will walk if we don’t give it to him.” It seems to me, when there’s a request for what a lot of people think are ludicrous compensation plans, you know the cars the mileage all of that stuff, that you just say, “Hey, it’s not in the package, see you later.” And the next person down that doesn’t want that car, is there that big of a difference in their qualification? EW: Again, it depends. When I was on the board, we didn’t get into that type of thing; we weren’t into all of those types of perks because we didn’t have the money. It depends, again, on the school board, the school district what they are saying what they want in that leader, and can that leader deliver for them in terms of relations with faculty and staff, in terms of relations with the community, and all of those kinds of things. WE: You’re not on the school board now? EW: No. WE: And you’re not running? EW: No. WE: So we can talk about this? EW: Yes, we can talk about it. WE: So, what is the most difficult job for a school board member? EW: What’s the most difficult job? WE: I know, going to the meetings that last for four hours? EW: No, no. That was an enjoyable part, for me at least. It was enjoyable because you got people coming to the board to present on difficult issues sometimes. The difficult one might be either, which thank goodness I didn’t have to do and we’d never really done when I was on the school board, would be the firing of a superintendent would be a very difficult one to do because sometimes that polarizes the community; but we didn’t have to do that one, so I am grateful I didn’t have to deal with that. Difficult ones, the negotiations were sometimes difficult, though I enjoyed that again because of the background that I have. Negotiations on teachers salary’s can be a very difficult and time consuming kind of work for a school board member. WE: Ok, you were fortunate enough, in my opinion, to have served on the school board with such people as Ruth Dahl, who was chairperson for many years, Ray Cox, a very knowledgeable individual, [unclear], also a very sharp individual. EW: John Ramsey, Mike Thorsteinson, and yes, there were quite a number of people. WE: What was your most, I already asked you what was your most difficult job was, what was your…if you were to tell your grandchildren that, “I used to be on the Northfield school board back in the nineties, and we did…” What would you be most proud of? EW: What would I be most proud of? WE: You as an individual or as a member of that school board. EW: Boy, there were so many different things Wayne, it wasn’t just one thing. WE: Well, then name them. EW: I think several things, making sure while we were on the board that we tried to keep class sizes down for the students to provide a learning environment for the students that was open, that there was attention to those students being paid, that teachers were compensated well enough that they wanted to be teachers, that they felt they were supported by the board as well as their administrators, that the administrators felt that they were supported by the board. Those were the kinds of things that I think and I feel we as a board did a very good job at and I felt as an individual member, I was very grateful for the people that we had working for us in all of the capacities that were there. And the students were always great when they’d come to the board meetings and observe us for a [unclear] class or would come to present on an issue that was important to them. WE: Whose class? EW: Let’s see, Mr. [unclear]. WE: [unclear] EW: Mr. [unclear] class. WE: And he was social I think? EW: Yes. And so the students coming there were always interesting to watch because they’d be watching and writing, sometimes asking questions to the board members, getting involved with an issue. So when the students showed up, that to me was really special because that’s part of the education process that the school should be having, is learning about government and these types of board because they’re the ones calling the shots. WE: Now, I think you were on the board when decisions were made on Bridgewater and the new middle school. EW: Yes. WE: So do you ever go out and look at that bronze plaque and see your name on there and say, “Hey cool name.” EW: No, I really don’t. The middle school doesn’t have a bronze plaque by the way. WE: Ok. EW: I think Bridgewater does. WE: What about your sitting on stage during graduation ceremonies? What was that like? EW: It was fun watching the students that you knew coming by you going, “My god they grew up! I remember you when you were just this little thing.” So yes, watching them over the years and watching them come across the stage was quite interesting. WE: Now, did you ever serve as chair? EW: No, no. It was parliamentarian. WE: How did the chair get elected? EW: The board votes on it. Somebody nominates somebody and then the board makes a decision. WE: Does it rotate like some…county commissioners sometimes do that. EW: No, yes they do that but not the board. That was a proposal that I had to the board but it didn’t go anywhere. WE: Well they must’ve really liked Ruth because she was chair for quite a while. EW: Yes, yes she was. WE: She’s going to be a guest of mine. EW: Oh good. WE: And I had [unclear] on and I think I had Ray Cox on too. EW: You’re getting the board members, the former board members. WE: Equal opportunity announcer. EW: [Laughter] WE: Twenty-one minutes before eleven o’clock on KYMN Radio with the Wayne Eddy Affair and my guest this morning is Eduardo Wolle and he has an interesting position in life and we haven’t gotten to that yet, but we certainly will be back with more in just a moment. [At this point there is a commercial break.] WE: A little bit of Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, “Up Where we Belong,” from An Officer and a Gentleman on KYMN Radio eighteen minutes before eleven o’clock on KYMN Radio. We have half of that in our studios, we have a gentleman and his name is Eduardo Wolle. Eduardo when you lived in Panama did you have a banana tree in your back yard? EW: [Laughing] I think we had a banana tree in the backyard, yes. WE: And of course bananas cannot be grown in the United States because of the weather conditions. EW: Not that I know of. WE: But what do you call a cluster of bananas? EW: I don’t know what do you call them? WE: Jeff Johnson had this on the radio this morning, a hand. EW: A hand? WE: Yes and each individual banana is called a finger. A cluster of bananas is called a hand, it consists of ten to twenty bananas which are known as fingers. EW: Interesting. WE: And as they ripen, as that fruit ripens the starch in the fruit turns to sugar and therefore the riper, the sweeter. Isn’t that interesting? Bananas are America’s number one fruit; now that surprised me. EW: Oh wow, I didn’t know that. WE: I would eat a banana over anything else, you know why? EW: Why? WE: It’s the easiest. EW: Well that’s true. WE: And I like it and it has potassium. EW: Yes it does. WE: Seventeen minutes before eleven o’clock and we’re talking to Eduardo Wolle and he is a former Northfield School Board member and we talked about all the other jobs he’s had in between and we talked about the education you had. What do you do on Monday morning now? EW: Well we’re moving into where I am now. I left the state, employment with the state, in May to become the executive director of Mediation Center which is affiliated with Hamline University. So Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I work there; Thursdays and Fridays I work down here in Rice County, I’m also the director of the Rice County Dispute Resolution program. So I go up to the cities and I’m down here, that’s why I can do this show on Fridays. WE: Ok, now who pays your salary up in the cities? EW: That is…it’s a 501C3, so were not being paid by Hamline University we’re being paid by people that we train to be mediators, people who are paying for cases that we do in mediation cases, family divorce cases, contract trainings that we do all of that kind of thing. WE: So lawyers pay you? EW: [Laughing] No. WE: No, I didn’t think so. EW: I knew lawyers would creep in here somewhere. WE: Well now, who pays you then? EW: Well as I said, it’s individuals. If we’re doing a training, for instance, we’re doing a thirty hour training for mediators, then the people that are taking that class would be paying us. For instance, a thirty hour training through Hamline or through the Mediation Center would be about eight hundred ten dollars. WE: And those people graduate from that training and where do they go and what do they do? EW: They do all sorts of things. They become qualified neutrals. Some of them are attorneys; some of them are social workers, psychologists, house wives. You name it, people who are interested with working with people in a conflict. WE: And where do they do that? EW: Oh just about anywhere. Attorneys of course in their practices, psychologists I think would be using it probably in their practice as well – it helps them understand the nature of conflict a little bit more – some of them may be going out, once you get the forty hour training, which is the family mediation training, then people do divorce mediations and what are called “post decree.” So you have a wide variety of people looking for different kinds of entry into mediation. WE: So if I wanted to do that. I would go up and take the forty hour course, I would pay them the thousand dollars or whatever it is. EW: Nine hundred ninety five for that one. WE: Ok, then I would come back to Rice County and I would submit a letter of completion to the court system? EW: Put out your shingle. What you do is you become a qualified neutral, if you want to you can go on the state roster and by being on the state roster two things happen. One is that you are agreeing to be under the jurisdiction of the court, the Supreme Court, with rules that are there which are rules 114; the other thing is that you would be able to accept cases from the court as well. So if you were doing family mediation you could have the judge refer a case to you or if the case was referred the attorneys would call and say, “Wayne, we’d like to have you as our mediator for this,” or you’d get a call from maybe the individuals who are in the divorce saying, “We’re going through a divorce, we feel that this might be the least expensive way to go and we’d like to hire you as the mediator.” WE: Is that a good paying job? EW: It can be, it depends on what you’re going to charge. WE: See now my impression, I had the privilege and the honor of having to go through mediation during my trip through the courts that a lot of people are familiar with and I won every case, you know; anyhow we had to go to mediation, directed by the court. To me it’s a stop at the trough of the lawyers because they got to be there, they represent you, you don’t have all that much to say, and then they go in and they talk privately with the mediator without the defendants or plaintiffs involved and then they talk with just the…and they go back and forth and the hours pile up and pretty soon they say, in my case, “We can’t come to an agreement on a settlement out of court, so we’re going to continue the court case.” There was another stop at the trough and people made thousands of dollars. EW: And sometimes that does happen. WE: Heck of a deal, forty hours! In forty hours I can get that little piece of paper and be a mediator like that? EW: You can be a mediator; the question is how much you’re going to charge. That depends on your time as a mediator. Starting off I don’t think you’re going to be able to get maybe two hundred fifty dollars an hour, which is what some people do. In your case, let’s say you went ahead and did it, you’d probably need to build up and you’d probably be needing to start a little bit less than that, maybe one hundred fifty, one hundred seventy five dollars an hour. WE: And people are out there going, “Oh my god, I’ll take that!” EW: Yeah, I’ll take that. But this isn’t constant; this isn’t something that you’re doing all the time. I mean, otherwise it’d be great, if I was earning one hundred and fifty dollars an hour, I’d be going wow! But I don’t. I do divorce mediations occasionally and I do a sliding fee scale because I know there are people out there that can’t pay or have very little recourse and don’t have a lot of money; so, I scaled it back based on their ability to pay. I go 150 to 200 an hour, usually is what I charge. WE: In that 40 hour course do you have an ethics code that is embedded in everybody’s…because you could, at 100 bucks an hour, 200 bucks an hour, say, “well, I think we need to talk about this more,” and stretch it out. EW: You could, but there is, as I said earlier, there is rule 114. In fact I am the chair of the Supreme Court Committee that deals with this. Any ethical violations by mediators come to us, and so we’re the ones that deal with those types of cases where somebody might feel that there was an overcharging by a mediator and that could certainly be something that would come to the committee and we’d have to look it over and decide based on the evidence, was there, and if there was, then we move forward with an investigation. So there are codes of ethics that mediators do need to follow here in the state of Minnesota. WE: Do you carry any weight though? I mean, can you actually find these individuals? Or dismiss a bill? EW: What we could do, one thing is certainly remove them from the roster, is the worst thing that would happen from our jurisdiction is that they would be kicked off the roster and would not be able to then continue as a mediator with being on the roster, which could effect their ability to get cases from the court. WE: well it seems kind of tempting for those that may be semi-retired to go up and pay that $1000 and do the 40 hour course, and then come down and hang your shingle up in your rec room, and send a little note out to all the lawyers in town and say, in the court, “hey, I’m available,” and if you can do a couple hours a week, it’s not taxable right? EW: Well, it is taxable, yes. Nice try. You do have to pay on that money. WE: They give you a 1099 when they pay you? EW: No, you have to report it. WE: So do you weed out people that you feel are just there for the fun of it? EW: Weed them out how? WE: Up at Hamline. If I wanted the 40 hour course do you look… EW: No, no. If you want to pay and take the course that’s up to you. I mean we’re not going to say, “you can’t take the course.” WE: so you could get little cards made up saying an official…EW: We give you little diplomas saying you’re a qualified neutral, that you’ve gone through the training through a mediation center. WE: Is it hard? Do you have to take a test? Do you have to fill out paperwork? EW: There’s a lot of stuff you have to do. 40 hours…it’s in a sitting. You’re there for 40 hours, or for 30 hours depending on if you want the civil. WE: Is there homework? EW: No, it’s all stuff that you’re doing right there. WE: Is there a test? EW: Not really. You could do it, but you’d have to be a good listener, and you have been so far. Those are the kinds of things that you’d be wanting in a mediator. Someone who can listen, who can work with parties, and we’re doing, here in Rice County, we’re doing a training in January for volunteers for our program so that would be the 30 hour training and we’re looking for people who are interested in being mediators and we’re doing that training about January 10th or so. It’s 30 hours. WE: What about a mediator, let’s say here in Northfield. Let’s say I went up and I took the 40 hour class. EW: Ok, we’re talking about the family one. WE: A thousand dollars, you know, the maximum. The one where you really know your 114’s. So I get that little diploma, and I can have little cards printed up – are there initials, like a CMT or something like that? EW: No, just “mediator.” WE: Ok, that’s too bad. EW: Sorry, you don’t get those. WE: Anyhow, would a person in a small town, and I’m going to call Northfield a small town, although I’m shocked at traffic in this town. Would it be a disadvantage, because are mediators supposed to not know the individuals that they’re mediating? EW: You know them, but you can disclose to the parties that you know individuals, and part of it is the self-disclosure of the mediator. For instance, if I was doing mediation with you and somebody else, and I knew you, then I would have to disclose that to the party and if the party still felt comfortable moving forward with the mediation, they could say “I’m ok with this. I understand the relationship and I’m willing to move forward.” Me as a mediator, if I was doing that and somebody said that, I would at least get it in writing that they said that it was ok. But typically you try to be careful about those types of things And we’ve got about twenty mediators that do mediations for the Rice County Resolution program and they’re people from Northfield and people from Faribault. Whenever we’re in court we always look down the list and see if we recognize anybody and if we recognize a certain person we say, “I can’t do that one,” so one of the other mediators will take it. WE: Who pays you for your court opinion? EW: Court opinion? Well, nobody really, these are all volunteers. WE: So when you’re working with the Rice County Court, do you ever have to testify? EW: No, we’re not allowed to testify. Mediators can’t be subpoenaed. WE: Oh. EW: We can’t be subpoenaed to testify because we’re neutrals. WE: Yes. Kind of like you’re married to the people. EW: Yes, sort of. I know what you’re saying. WE: You don’t mind if I take a break do you? EW: No, go ahead. WE: Eduardo Wolle is my guest here on KYMN Radio, pretty trusting discussion going on here right now. You know I play the devil’s advocate? EW: Oh I know, I know. I’ve watched you for many years. [At this point there is a commercial break.] WE: Never did understand that song, how about you Eduardo? EW: I do. WE: What is it about? I mean a key, like a kilo of drugs or something? EW: No, no, no. You know roller skate and the key. WE: Well, I know that. EW: I’m not going into the deeper meaning that you’re going into. WE: Yes, well that was the era back then and there. EW: True, true. It could be. WE: Two and a half minutes before it is eleven o’clock on KYMN Radio. Eduardo Wolle is my guest on part three. Normally we hang her up at eleven o’clock but let’s go to eleven twenty-five. EW: Ok, I’m game. WE: Because we’re… EW: News. WE: Well, yes. But we’re into your current life and what you do because it’s really a blur from the time that you were born to here. EW: [Laughing] I don’t think. How do I feel? WE: Have you ever laid in bed and just say to yourself, “God, what am I going to do with my life?” EW: What am I going to do when I grow up? No. WE: You’ve got so many interesting things that you’ve done with your life. I mean a lot of guys would be scared to quit a job and go on to the next one for two, two and a half years. EW: Especially with this pay. WE: Well yes, that’s a safe haven when you’re there. EW: I know, it is, it is. But, I like challenges and to me, where I was moving, was a good challenge. And so I felt it was worth it. WE: Ok now once again, what do you do during the day? Let me see if I remember. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday you’re at Hamline University and you run the Mediation Center and that’s where people come to learn how to be mediators. EW: Partially, that’s one of the things I do. WE: What else do you do? EW: Well, we do mediations of course. We do mediations. WE: On campus? EW: No, well we do mediations here at the center, typically divorce mediations. We also do contract training. WE: Why is Hamline allowing you space on the campus for what appears to be an independent enterprise? EW: Because that’s the affiliation agreement that Hamline and Mediation Center reached back in 1997-98. WE: And it’s a non-profit? EW: It’s a non-profit. WE: Except for the employees. EW: We’re all a non-profit. WE: Well you get paid don’t you? EW: Yes, but it’s still a non-profit. [Laughing] I’ll tell you about that. WE: I know about 501-3C’s, I’ve been involved in a few myself and they’re all good. EW: Thank you. WE: And we are going to have to come back because I want to hear about cases and not names and people. EW: Yeah, we can’t do that but I can talk about cases. WE: Yeah, I’d like to hear about what your biggest problems are and the court system. EW: Ok. WE: Ok, this is KYMN Radio, we’re from Northfield, Minnesota, we couldn’t be prouder. KYMN a friend you can count on. [At this point there is a break.] WE: Wayne Eddy, I remember playing Dwayne Eddy music on KYMN Radio and that theme that I used is Dwayne Eddy called the Rebel Rouser from about 1958. Any who, it’s six minutes after eleven o’clock and we’ve got to finish up with Eduardo because this is part four. EW: No, part three still. WE: Well ok, part three still. Let’s concentrate on your current position; we have a lot of messages we have to pass along too. First of all, can you give me an example of a typical mediation case in Rice County without naming names exactly what the problem was? Do you call them cases? EW: Yes. Well I can tell you different things because what we’ve done is we’ve also created a new process in court that’s not done anywhere in the nation. We get all sorts of different cases, we deal with conciliation court, mainly small claims court cases and these are all a wide range of cases dealing with all sorts of different things: businesses, neighbors, friends, all those kinds of cases. WE: Now, when you do that you’re relieving the justice system of a lot of time. And you’re not being paid, you’re volunteers? EW: Our people are volunteers. There are two paid staff people, myself and an assistant, Judy Solstad. We get our funding from Rice County, we get fifteen thousand from Rice County, we get some money from United Way; so, our total budget is from roughly about twenty, twenty-five thousand dollars is what we bring in. And then we get fees. WE: And a huge savings to the county I would assume? EW: Yes, and the court. WE: Ok, now conciliation court that basically is small claims and its bills to retailers and all kinds of things. EW: Small claims. Oh yes, it gets into all sorts of different things. I remember a case where neighbors were fighting over toys. I mean, you get into all sorts of things. WE: Toys? EW: Toys. The kids had exchanged toys and one of the toys ended up not working and one kid wanted it back because, you know, it was worth maybe about a hundred or so dollars and the other kid wouldn’t give it back; so, eventually the parents took it to court. I know that people are saying, “Well, gosh, why did they do that?” I guess when people are in conflict, the place that they look for to resolve those disputes is court. Well, what we’re trying to say is that there are other ways of trying to deal with this stuff other than going to court, either talk to the other party or moving with Rice County Dispute Resolution program. WE: Do you think most of them are based on principle or dollars? EW: It’s a combination. I mean, we see all sorts of different things where it’s interrelation which is maybe what’s driving the issue of the money. There may be something that somebody felt that they’ve been told something by the other party, there’s money involved, but it’s really based on the relation that the two people have. So sometimes you have to work on the relational part before you can get to the money part because the money part is only the tip of the iceberg. WE: I’ve once heard a lawyer say that, “The only people that have something to lose in a divorce are people that have something,” other than that, divorce is three hundred or four hundred bucks if there’s no property involved and if they both agree, boom, it’s over with. EW: Yes, and we’ve done those types of mediations where…I remember one that I did which was two hours; we just needed to work through, there were no kids involved, there was some property, what have you, but it wasn’t that much and saved them a lot of money. WE: When you mediate, do you have both parties in front of you at all times? EW: No, we sometimes move into what are called caucuses, where you talked about it a little bit, where the parties are separated so that either…there are all sorts of reasons for that kind of separation. Maybe the mediator wants to talk with a party individually or maybe the party doesn’t feel comfortable with the other one so they separate or one of the parties just wants to talk with the mediator because they want to give them some confidential information. WE: What if one of the parties is paranoid? EW: Paranoid, well… WE: You know when you want to go meet with the other person in secret, what are they talking about? [Wayne is impersonating the mind of one of the parties of a mediation case here]. EW: Well, I’ve not had that kind of case but we usually get something from the one party that says well you can tell them this and we go back and tell the other party this is what this party has told us that we can say to you and relay, “Blah, blah, blah.” WE: So you might get a lot of exercise? EW: Sometimes you get a lot of exercise going back and forth. That’s part of what works in trying to get a successful mediation. WE: We’re going to take a break and then when we come back I’m going to ask you your funniest one, your saddest one, your longest one, your shortest one; so you can think about that. EW: [Lauging] Ahh, ok. WE: We’ll be back with more with Eduardo Wolle right after this important time out. [At this point there is a commercial break]. WE: A little bit of Tony Orlando and Dawn, do you remember that? EW: Oh yes. WE: We’re back live and in color on KYMN Radio, the Wayne Eddy Affair, the extended version of our interview with Eduardo Wolle. Eduardo, when we took that brief break, we asked you to come up with your funniest, your saddest, your longest, and your shortest mediation in the history of your efforts either at the Rice County level or at… EW: Wherever. Ok, I can tell you divorce mediation, I had one that lasted ten minutes. After I gave the opening, which we usually do as mediators, which lays out information about how the process is going to work one of the things that we indicate, I learned from this one, I might as well say, that one of the things that we say is that this is a voluntary process and at any point and of the parties can leave; so, after I’d finished saying that, one of the parties said, “Good, I’m out of here.” So that was my shortest. WE: Did you still charge by the hour though? EW: No, I didn’t charge. No, they came, they saw, they left so that was it. WE: Ok. EW: The other ones I’ve done, one that really showed me the nature of how you transform people in conflict from people who are at each others’ throats and wanting to rip it out was a harassment mediation I did between two people, two people who had been involved romantically and were at loggerheads with each other, you know calling each other names and what have you and it was very tense with that one. When we finished we had come to an agreement and when I came out of the meeting room after I had written up the paper work, I was finishing everything up, they were out in the hall talking and they hugged. That to me showed that people can really transform from being at each others’ throats to realizing that we can work things out and we can talk it through and come to an agreement that will work for us. WE: And you call that a success? EW: I call that a success, but also mediation is a success almost all the time because as long as you are getting people in to talk with each other, it is a success, because people can just be so opposite. WE: Sure. Now, I asked for your longest, shortest, funniest, and saddest. Was your first one the funniest and shortest? EW: [Laughing] It was the shortest and it was quite an interesting one, that was a learning one. WE: Ok, then the second one here you talked about was heartwarming that it works. EW: Yes. WE: Ok, what about do you got a funny one? EW: A funny one? Boy, I can’t think of a funny one right off the top of my head because they are all, you know, they are all, when you’re talking about conflict, sometimes you can have a little humor in there but I can’t think of one that’s really funny. WE: Well, I’m thinking about a woman or a man that would say the other person there is very sarcastic and then have the other person there is zipping and zapping and being sarcastic. EW: Yes, no, you try to, when you’re looking at these, I can’t think of one that would be funny in that way. WE: Did you ever take one home with you? A sad one? EW: No, I tend to leave them at the door when you leave. I think about them afterwards after I’ve done them and if I do what’s called a co-mediation with somebody else, then we’ll analyze what went well what didn’t go well with that kind of a case. WE: Are these sessions recorded? EW: No, they can’t be. Everything is confidential in those sessions and it’s almost like a confessional in a way, if you want to put it into religious terms, because what you’re saying in there is confidential between the parties and the mediator. If I violate that and go out and start babbling and saying, “Well gosh in that mediation with Wayne, Wayne said blah, blah, blah,” they can take me to the review board. WE: Sure. And of course you mentioned earlier you can’t be subpoenaed. EW: No, we can’t be subpoenaed. That’s one of the things that they sign when we go through this. WE: Boy, that’s a real protector isn’t it? EW: It is because it protects the parties as well. They know that it’s confidential. WE: You indicated that anybody can be a mediator most more than likely a lawyer or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? EW: No, it’s anybody whether it’s a nurse an attorney. WE: So, let’s, there’s a lot of listeners might know me either personally or they might know me through KYMN Radio or whatever case it might be. EW: You’re going to ask that question aren’t you? WE: Do you think I would be a good mediator? EW: [Laughing] You’re an interesting character. You know…WE: Be honest. EW: I’m getting there to be honest. I’ve known you for a long time Wayne and sometimes you can be difficult and you’re a good listener but one of the things that you do in mediation is you really don’t give an opinion. Mediation is one where you’re listening to the person, you’re listening from them; unless you’re going to be an evaluative mediator then you probably would be a good mediator. Evaluative means that you look at their case and you say, “You know, I don’t think you have a good case here because x,y, and z,” you might be good at that. If you were a facilitative mediator working with the parties and bringing out some of the interests I think you might get a little more frustrated with that and I don’t know if you’d do well with that one but you know, you wanted me to be honest with you. WE: No, I got thick skin. Though I mean I would have to learn to say, “Well, how do you feel about that?” EW: Not necessarily. [Laughing] There are other ways of doing it. WE: Ok. EW: But you could probably do it. WE: And I did have another question and I forgot what it was. EW: Oh. Well maybe it wasn’t so thick skinned, huh? WE: No, no, no, I had it here and then it…It was a pretty logical question too. EW: You mean about the training or being a mediator? WE: Yes, I forget about what it was. That happens to me occasionally. EW: I do it too. WE: [Unclear] though, it was a good question I should have written it down. I should have wrote it. EW: You’ll remember. WE: We’ll take one break and come back and do a wrap alright? EW: Ok. WE: We’re talking with Eduardo Wolle on KYMN Radio. [At this point there is another commercial break]. WE: Good morning we’re on the Wayne Eddy Affair, we’re coming to a conclusion. Now Eduardo Wolle, you have been just a very interesting guest. EW: Thanks Wayne. WE: And I can see where you would be a good mediator because you know how to go along, get along, and get things done. EW: Thanks. WE: I tease you incessantly about being at the public trough and getting education, getting a job here, getting a job there but you seem to be real happy where you’re at right now. EW: Yes, I am. WE: And your daughter’s in college already? Isn’t that something? EW: Yes, it is and our son is at high school, he’s a sophomore. WE: And is he involved in anything? EW: Sports? Yes, he loves sports. He likes soccer. He’s been involved with soccer, basketball…WE: What’s his name? EW: Carlos. WE: Carlos? EW: Yes. WE: Carlos… EW: Wolle. WE: Wolle, Carlos. And then there’s Lolita. EW: Lolita. WE: I love that name that is so pretty. EW: [Laughing]. WE: Lolita. Wasn’t there a show about a Lolita about the 1950s? EW: There was a book by Nabokov. There was a book by Nabokov and there was a movie. WE: Wasn’t she kind of a risqué? EW: She was but we didn’t name her after that, we named her after my mother. WE: [Laughing] Oh yes, ok. EW: [Laughing] Nice try though. WE: So, if people want to get involved as a client of the system or maybe become a mediator, how can they get in touch with you? EW: They can call us at area code (507) 664-3522, here in Northfield. WE: Yes, 664-3522. EW: Yes. WE: And you are suggesting to me personally that I perhaps should save the thousand dollars and forget about it. EW: Actually Wayne, what I would suggest for you is why don’t you come and observe one? WE: Yes, here’s my question, [unclear] question. EW: Oh good. WE: In the conciliation court is it all paperwork, paperwork, paperwork? Half fax like in the court, just deal with the fax man? EW: Depending, if it’s mediation it’s a discussion between people but we have this new process that I told you about which is conciliation expediting. In that case, people present their case and we make a decision or we try to help them come through. WE: Eduardo, thank you. EW: Thanks Wayne. WE: Eduardo Wolle has been my guest on KYMN. [Transcribed 2015 by Rebecca Dau for the Northfield Historical Society]

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Eduardo Wolle, Narrator Wayne Eddy KYMN Radio Interviewer October 27, 2006 At KYMN Radio Station Northfield, Minnesota October 27, 2006 WE: Hey good morning, good morning, welcome back to the Wayne Eddy Affair on KYMN Radio. Eduardo Wolle is my guest KYMN but I do want to say congratulations to the Rice County Historical Society… [Wayne takes this time to thank the key note speakers and the coordinator of the annual meeting of the Rice County Historical Society.] WE: Ok, we’re back with Eduardo Wolle, we’ve got him in Northfield. Let’s see, you’ve got all these different jobs with government agencies, the Carleton College, and then you ended up at OSHA. EW: Well actually, after the Spanish Speaking Affairs Council I took a job with the Department of Labor and Industry as the assistant to the commissioner. In that capacity I was the legislative liaison, shall we say, for the department. WE: Of? EW: Of labor and industry. WE: Alright, now I would imagine that you probably hooked up with John Tuma on occasions. EW: Yes, yes I knew John when he was in the legislature. WE: Ok, John Tuma was an attorney here in town and a former legislator who chose not to run after two terms. And he is a specialist with…EW: He did worker’s compensation in his private practice. So I knew that as well but I spent about a year and a half within the department. From there I was moved, they liked me so much they wanted to make me permanent; so this was a political appointment I had through the governor’s office and I moved into the area of worker’s compensation as a mediator, arbitrator in that area. WE: Now, you appear to me to be a pretty mellow fellow, as we say, and you seem to me to be the type that would fight for the underdog and in that position with that department was your job to keep people honest or to get people taxpayer’s money?EW: My job, within the department, if you’re talking about the worker’s compensation piece [laughter].WE: Yes, which other one could I have been talking about?EW: Well, because the one I had before was the legislative liaison but then I moved into the worker’s compensation one. Within the worker’s compensation field I was a mediator, arbitrator and my job was to be a neutral in deciding cases under the arbitration piece of worker’s compensation cases. Under the mediation piece it was working with parties that hadn’t tried to settle their claims or come to agreements regarding specifics of those claims. WE: Now are these claims against the state of Minnesota or are they private companies? EW: No, no, insurance companies. WE: Oh, ok. EW: Yes, this would be for instance the filing of a rehabilitation request for services of a qualified rehab consultant and let’s say the insurance company doesn’t think that the employee is a qualified employee to receive those benefits. So, that kind of a case would come to me either as an arbitrator or a mediator. That’s kind of the cases that would come to me. WE: Were you an advocate for either side? EW: No, no I couldn’t be an advocate. WE: Ok, what are some of the stories that you can tell? I mean, give me a story, obviously not names, but give me a story about somebody that was being denied dollars or services or medical help or employment or whatever that big, tough insurance companies were denying and they were right that you had to get in there and help that person. EW: You’re putting me on the spot there. There are so many stories and I’m trying to narrow it down to just one and I just can’t right off hand. WE: Ok, give me a story where you went out with cameras and you watched this guy climb a tree and saw limbs and then come into the unemployment office with crutches and take his money. EW: [Laughter] We didn’t do that. Didn’t do that. WE: You’ve got stories like that though, don’t you? EW: We would have stories where an insurance company would claim that an employee was able to do more than what they were doing. Because of their injury, they were claiming that they couldn’t do certain things and the insurance company claimed that they had surveillance on them. We’d get those every so often. I didn’t usually see the tapes, we didn’t really get a lot of those; those were the kinds of cases that tended to go higher up into the office of Administrative Hearings because they were more complicated. We were the first line of defense on the issues of worker’s compensation where the insurer would file what are called either a medical request, which was up to fifteen-thousand dollars, and then there were what are called rehab requests as well. WE: What do you mean fifteen-thousand dollars? EW: In medical bills. So if an employee had injuries and had a lot of medical bills, we had jurisdiction up to a certain amount and then after that amount that jurisdiction would transfer over to the office of Administrative Hearings. WE: But you would decide whether the insurance companies should pay or not pay? EW: Correct. Based on the preponderance of the evidence that was presented to us by both sides. WE: But if they have a bill? EW: It gets more complicated than that. It could be an issue of whether the treatment was reasonable and necessary, which is usually what the insurance company was indicating that they didn’t think that the treatment might be reasonable and necessary. For instance, chiropractic care, and insurer could say, “This is way beyond the treatment parameters and we don’t want to be paying for this anymore.” So they would send a letter to the employee saying that they’re not going to pay for this anymore. The employee would either seek out an attorney who would call the department and either present the case themselves or have the attorney present the case. WE: Or being treated for pre-existing conditions? EW: That could happen as well. A pre-existing condition that the employee had claimed as part of an injury and then it was found out that it was the pre-existing condition. But that gets more complicated, it depends on if that injury aggravates that injury or not, so that gets a little bit more complicated. WE: These are all on-the-job injuries? EW: Yes, these are all on-the-job injuries. WE: Alright, what was the most ludicrous claim where somebody made, like, “I need ten thousand dollars for my left fingernail,” or something like that? EW: No, one was a mediation that I was doing where the parties were very far apart. I was working with both parties to try to work something out but it was very difficult because one party wanted several million dollars and the other party was willing to pay five thousand dollars. WE: And what was the injury?
EW: There were some psychological, there were some other injuries, burns, I think, that had happened at some point. But they were in discussion that the problem was trying to work with the one party that wanted several millions to explain that wasn’t that type of an injury that you get that type of money. And in worker’s compensation, you don’t see that, even if there’s a death you don’t see millions and millions of dollars. WE: Now do these parties have lawyers that come in and argue for them? EW: Sometimes, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they are just the individual. WE: And what percentage do you think are just setups to get money to rob the bank, take advantage of? EW: Very, very few. WE: Really? EW: Yes, when you’re looking at the cases you can tell how legitimate the case is. There were a lot of legitimate cases, there were some that with some of the medical ones might be crossing the line a little; with the employees that we saw, there were very few. There were issues of treatment that they were getting; it was about usually when we were dealing with the medical requests. So I didn’t see those as…there are a lot of rumors out there of people milking the system, I didn’t see that. WE: Now, what job are we talking about? Where are we at? EW: [Laughing] We’re at the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, I’m a mediator, arbitrator at this point. WE: Are you a consultant or are you full time? EW: I’m full time. WE: Now, when you work for a government body, there are all kinds of perks for retirement and health insurance and all of that. So did your job working as an appointee of the governor’s council and you worked within the legislature. EW: That was only for a year and a half. WE: Ok, now was that a government job where you could add those years to your service to the state of Minnesota? EW: Yes, correct. WE: Ok, so you don’t lose that? EW: Right. That was an unclassified position, what I became when I moved into the mediator, arbitrator position was a classified position within the state. WE: And there’s the old thing called the high five? EW: Yes. WE: Yes, the high five is? EW: Your highest number that you’ve reached with your salary. WE: Yes, and you know you could get a cut in pay this year, but you take the last one’s raise. And that’s what your retirement is based on and benefits. EW: Yes, correct. WE: And so, now that we’re done with it, do you have any other stories that you can tell? EW: Well, the department…you wanted to know about OSHA as well. WE: What year was it that you were working…you were working with Arnie Carlson, I’m trying to figure it out, did you ever have to work with Jesse? EW: No, by that point I wasn’t a government [unclear] appointment. I was just a state employee, working away. WE: At? EW: The Department of Labor and Industry. WE: Oh. EW: But at that point I spent from, what was it, 1993 was when I was there, it was thirteen years with the department. WE: Oh wow, time flies. I just can’t get over it, you know. How long ago did you work with KYMN Radio on the air? EW: That was in 1994 I think, starting in ’94, it was about seven years with KYMN. WE: But it was twelve years ago. EW: Yes. WE: Ok. It’s seventeen minutes after ten o’clock. Our guest here on KYMN Radio is Eduardo Wolle and we’re bringing him up to date and what he’s up to right now, a lot of various interesting jobs and a lot of interesting background. And by the way Eduardo, you’d be proud of me, I did watch a special on the Panama Canal and during that special they were talking about mega structures or modern marvels and it’s amazing that, that thing was built way back when and when they didn’t have the equipment that they have today. The amount of debris or junk they can clean out of that canal with this, well we’ll say steam shovel. EW: That’s what it was. WE: That steam shovel could scoop, in one scoop, more than back in 1913 or whenever they started it, it could do it in a week or something like that. EW: Yes. WE: It’s amazing. But now I understand where you are from. Ok, an interesting little country that separates the two. EW: Yes, once they dug the ditch, the big ditch, they kind of separated the South America from the rest of the America. It’s connecting Columbia, South America with Central America and North America. WE: Now did you know Nicaragua? Or not Nicaragua, what’s his name? The guy with the face. EW: [unclear]. [Laughter]. WE: The guy with the … EW: Yes, that’s it. [Unclear]. WE: That’s the pineapple face? EW: Yes, that’s the pineapple face. Noriega. WE: Noriega. EW: No, I didn’t know Noriega. WE: You didn’t know him? EW: No, I didn’t know him. Sorry. WE: What an idiot he was. You know what I don’t understand was some of these people that get millions of dollars want tens of millions and those that have tens of millions want hundreds of millions of dollars. EW: It’s called greed. WE: Yes, you know, give me a million bucks and I’ll be happy. EW: Well, we always want a little bit more sometimes. WE: Of course I used to say that when I was fourteen, nowadays…EW: A million won’t buy you much. WE: No, it’s amazing. We’re going to take a break. We’ll come back and we’ll bring you up to date on Eduardo Wolle, a Northfield resident, who’s served on our Northfield school board for a number of years and that’s our connection. [At this point there is a commercial break.] WE: Eduardo, you’re keeping time to that music with…do that on the microphone there. EW: [Eduardo makes a sound using his hands keeping in time with the music announcing the show’s return from the commercial break]. WE: So, where did you learn how to do that? EW: High school. WE: Bored? EW: Music. Remember, music major. WE: Oh, ok. Squeezing his hands together making that noise, I could’ve said squeezing his cheeks but no. So Eduardo, on this one job we’re at, OSHA, I call it OSHA. EW: Yes, I know you do, Department of Labor and Industry. WE: Ok, any interesting things you can tell us about that? EW: Yes, I did a lot of different things. I didn’t just do worker’s compensation; some of the things that I did was OSHA. OSHA would bring me in to work with them when they’d go out into the field to find out injuries that had happened, either catastrophic, where there was a death or amputations. Typically the one’s that I’d go for with them were Hispanics who’d been either killed or had a limb amputated. So, I’d go out to translate with OSHA. And so when I was either out on an inspection with them, if there was just an inspection that they were doing, and it was a high number of Hispanics in the plant, for instance meat packing plants, the turkey plants, I’d go with OSHA interpreting. If it was an issue of a death or an amputation I’d go out with OSHA as well to do interpreting for them. That wasn’t really part of my duties as worker’s compensation, as a person within that area but I felt it was beneficial to go along and help OSHA to get a better idea of what was happening with either the workers or the one who’d been injured. WE: The purpose of OSHA is to see if any safety rules were broken and accidents do happen. EW: Yes, and there were some really bad accidents that I went to with OSHA. WE: What about an undocumented worker at Hormel or something or Faribault at the turkey place? Did they get the benefits that American taxpayers or companies are paying into? Did the undocumented workers get to take advantage of any compensation? EW: If somebody who is undocumented is injured on the job, state law allows people who are injured to receive benefits because they are technically working here whether documented or undocumented. So, there are benefits that you would get. But at some point, there is a debate as far as whether other ongoing benefits are…that undocumented are able to get, for instance, one would be temporary/partial disability benefits, which is if you return back to work and you’re getting less than what you were making at the time of injury, one of the questions is, and I don’t think the Supreme Court has had this one yet, is whether an undocumented is able to receive those kinds of benefits. The other one that has been discussed is the issue of qualified rehab consultants receiving an undocumented who comes in for a consultation and then the placement of that person in that job; there’s a big debate about that, whether it’s a “tell, don’t tell” kind of thing because the qualified rehab consultant can’t say, “Wayne do you have papers or not,” unless they are asking everybody. So those are kind of the issues that you get into. WE: So, basically, a non-existing person can be in the public trough, at the public trough? EW: Well, actually it’s not the public trough because the state isn’t paying for that. The insurance company is the one that’s paying for it. WE: So the insurance company can be paying somebody something, a person that does not even exist in this country, a non-entity? EW: Well, they exist but they’re not recorded. Again, legal documentation is one thing and that’s what we caution people about, be very careful that when they are judging whether somebody’s a documented or undocumented, especially qualified rehab consultants. WE: And whatever you do, if somebody comes to apply for a job that looks different from you, do not ask them anything. EW: No, you really can’t but what you can ask is for the papers. I mean one of the things that employers need to be doing, of course, is to be asking for papers to find out if the person is documented or not. WE: Could I ask you? EW: I can show you papers. WE: I mean your Panamanian and American. EW: Yes. WE: Ok, so you are half Latino? EW: Yes. WE: You appear Norwegian. You know just for the sake of this. EW: [Laughing] Ok put me in that area, that’s fine. WE: I mean nobody would guess you for a Latino. EW: No, they wouldn’t. WE: Ok, so if you apply for a job and I was the boss, if you appeared Latino, I might ask you for your papers. EW: And you’d have to be doing that for just about everybody. For instance…WE: Yes, but if I asked, the way you look right now, if I asked you for your papers, it would be… EW: I don’t think that’s a problem because there are people who are undocumented who are Irish, Canadian, people that look like you and me. WE: So everybody should be asked? EW: I think so and actually they do. For instance, when I was on the planning commission for the county, I was asked for my papers, documentation that I was a legal citizen here in the United States. I had to bring my passport and that kind of thing. WE: How much do you get for a lower left leg? EW: [Laughing] Oh boy, I can’t remember the amount. It’s based on percentage of the whole body and depending on where the amputation would have happened, I don’t know without going to the schedule. There’s a schedule which has that out. WE: Left, right does it make a difference? Well, if you’re right handed it’d be more valuable than left handed? EW: Yes, it can be but again it’s based on the whole body, so if you lost your left hand, lost a right hand, it’s probably about the same. But again without going to the schedule, I don’t know off the top of my head. WE: Ok, so they have an ear, a nose, and an eye? EW: Everything. All sorts of different things that could happen. WE: Tooth? EW: Yes. WE: Toe? EW: Yes, I’ve dealt with all of that. Lots of different things. WE: Ok. Oh man, now where should I go? It’s 10:30a.m. here on KYMN Radio. Ok, now, let’s get you out of there. EW: Ok. WE: Let’s get you to, when did you run for school board? EW: In 1994, I believe it was. WE: And how many terms did you serve? EW: I was on three terms for ten years. WE: How did you enjoy that? EW: I liked it. It was interesting to do public policy. I enjoyed working with the members of the school board, we didn’t always see eye to eye but we were very respectful of each other, we had really good debates that dealt with the issues and not personalities. That to me, in public service is very critical to being able to get the confidence of the public as well as your board members. WE: Do you think there are “siders” on school boards? EW: Siders? WE: Well, siders would be administration, teachers, and physical plants. In other words, would you probably be more prone to give a raise to the teachers than let’s say one of your cohorts? EW: You mean a raise to one of my board members as opposed to the teachers or what? WE: No, what I mean is…I don’t know how to say it. EW: Ok, just say it. WE: You know what I mean don’t you? EW: What we would do was… WE: Your bleeding heart, you want to give everything to everybody as much as you can. EW: I believe that, again, public policy was what dictated what the board did and bleeding heart or conservative; I think people looked at the issues and made decisions based on the information that was presented to them. Yes, we did give increases, but those were based on information, again, that had negotiations. It wasn’t just, “Let’s give you this amount,” there was give and take in that. And I know, unless you’ve served on the school board, it’s typical to look at it and say, “Gosh that was fair,” or, “that wasn’t fair,” but I think that the board always had to make the best decision possible given the information that it had. WE: On Monday, Charlie Kyte, is going to be my guest. EW: Oh yes, excellent. WE: Why is that superintendents of schools have been in the news a lot in the last year? And why is it that school boards are so generous in regards to golden parachutes or whatever you want to call them? I mean where they can store sick days and store vacation days and when they quit they end up with almost a year’s pay it seems in addition. Why do you, why do school boards do that? Aren’t there enough qualified people? EW: I guess it depends on the negotiations again for that school board. I wouldn’t be able to speak for the other school boards and how they negotiated it. It depends on how badly they want that individual and what they are willing to give up for that in those negotiations. WE: Now do the superintendents themselves negotiate it or do they have a representative that gets stuff for them? EW: Usually, for us down here, it’s been typically the superintendent that would negotiate with the board and we would work out a package with them with our representative and so that would come to the board and we’d have a vote on whether we accepted that package or not. WE: So should there be a psychologist on the board so that they can look at that applicant and say, “You know what guys, he really wants this job, don’t forget him,” or, “You know what, this guy will walk if we don’t give it to him.” It seems to me, when there’s a request for what a lot of people think are ludicrous compensation plans, you know the cars the mileage all of that stuff, that you just say, “Hey, it’s not in the package, see you later.” And the next person down that doesn’t want that car, is there that big of a difference in their qualification? EW: Again, it depends. When I was on the board, we didn’t get into that type of thing; we weren’t into all of those types of perks because we didn’t have the money. It depends, again, on the school board, the school district what they are saying what they want in that leader, and can that leader deliver for them in terms of relations with faculty and staff, in terms of relations with the community, and all of those kinds of things. WE: You’re not on the school board now? EW: No. WE: And you’re not running? EW: No. WE: So we can talk about this? EW: Yes, we can talk about it. WE: So, what is the most difficult job for a school board member? EW: What’s the most difficult job? WE: I know, going to the meetings that last for four hours? EW: No, no. That was an enjoyable part, for me at least. It was enjoyable because you got people coming to the board to present on difficult issues sometimes. The difficult one might be either, which thank goodness I didn’t have to do and we’d never really done when I was on the school board, would be the firing of a superintendent would be a very difficult one to do because sometimes that polarizes the community; but we didn’t have to do that one, so I am grateful I didn’t have to deal with that. Difficult ones, the negotiations were sometimes difficult, though I enjoyed that again because of the background that I have. Negotiations on teachers salary’s can be a very difficult and time consuming kind of work for a school board member. WE: Ok, you were fortunate enough, in my opinion, to have served on the school board with such people as Ruth Dahl, who was chairperson for many years, Ray Cox, a very knowledgeable individual, [unclear], also a very sharp individual. EW: John Ramsey, Mike Thorsteinson, and yes, there were quite a number of people. WE: What was your most, I already asked you what was your most difficult job was, what was your…if you were to tell your grandchildren that, “I used to be on the Northfield school board back in the nineties, and we did…” What would you be most proud of? EW: What would I be most proud of? WE: You as an individual or as a member of that school board. EW: Boy, there were so many different things Wayne, it wasn’t just one thing. WE: Well, then name them. EW: I think several things, making sure while we were on the board that we tried to keep class sizes down for the students to provide a learning environment for the students that was open, that there was attention to those students being paid, that teachers were compensated well enough that they wanted to be teachers, that they felt they were supported by the board as well as their administrators, that the administrators felt that they were supported by the board. Those were the kinds of things that I think and I feel we as a board did a very good job at and I felt as an individual member, I was very grateful for the people that we had working for us in all of the capacities that were there. And the students were always great when they’d come to the board meetings and observe us for a [unclear] class or would come to present on an issue that was important to them. WE: Whose class? EW: Let’s see, Mr. [unclear]. WE: [unclear] EW: Mr. [unclear] class. WE: And he was social I think? EW: Yes. And so the students coming there were always interesting to watch because they’d be watching and writing, sometimes asking questions to the board members, getting involved with an issue. So when the students showed up, that to me was really special because that’s part of the education process that the school should be having, is learning about government and these types of board because they’re the ones calling the shots. WE: Now, I think you were on the board when decisions were made on Bridgewater and the new middle school. EW: Yes. WE: So do you ever go out and look at that bronze plaque and see your name on there and say, “Hey cool name.” EW: No, I really don’t. The middle school doesn’t have a bronze plaque by the way. WE: Ok. EW: I think Bridgewater does. WE: What about your sitting on stage during graduation ceremonies? What was that like? EW: It was fun watching the students that you knew coming by you going, “My god they grew up! I remember you when you were just this little thing.” So yes, watching them over the years and watching them come across the stage was quite interesting. WE: Now, did you ever serve as chair? EW: No, no. It was parliamentarian. WE: How did the chair get elected? EW: The board votes on it. Somebody nominates somebody and then the board makes a decision. WE: Does it rotate like some…county commissioners sometimes do that. EW: No, yes they do that but not the board. That was a proposal that I had to the board but it didn’t go anywhere. WE: Well they must’ve really liked Ruth because she was chair for quite a while. EW: Yes, yes she was. WE: She’s going to be a guest of mine. EW: Oh good. WE: And I had [unclear] on and I think I had Ray Cox on too. EW: You’re getting the board members, the former board members. WE: Equal opportunity announcer. EW: [Laughter] WE: Twenty-one minutes before eleven o’clock on KYMN Radio with the Wayne Eddy Affair and my guest this morning is Eduardo Wolle and he has an interesting position in life and we haven’t gotten to that yet, but we certainly will be back with more in just a moment. [At this point there is a commercial break.] WE: A little bit of Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes, “Up Where we Belong,” from An Officer and a Gentleman on KYMN Radio eighteen minutes before eleven o’clock on KYMN Radio. We have half of that in our studios, we have a gentleman and his name is Eduardo Wolle. Eduardo when you lived in Panama did you have a banana tree in your back yard? EW: [Laughing] I think we had a banana tree in the backyard, yes. WE: And of course bananas cannot be grown in the United States because of the weather conditions. EW: Not that I know of. WE: But what do you call a cluster of bananas? EW: I don’t know what do you call them? WE: Jeff Johnson had this on the radio this morning, a hand. EW: A hand? WE: Yes and each individual banana is called a finger. A cluster of bananas is called a hand, it consists of ten to twenty bananas which are known as fingers. EW: Interesting. WE: And as they ripen, as that fruit ripens the starch in the fruit turns to sugar and therefore the riper, the sweeter. Isn’t that interesting? Bananas are America’s number one fruit; now that surprised me. EW: Oh wow, I didn’t know that. WE: I would eat a banana over anything else, you know why? EW: Why? WE: It’s the easiest. EW: Well that’s true. WE: And I like it and it has potassium. EW: Yes it does. WE: Seventeen minutes before eleven o’clock and we’re talking to Eduardo Wolle and he is a former Northfield School Board member and we talked about all the other jobs he’s had in between and we talked about the education you had. What do you do on Monday morning now? EW: Well we’re moving into where I am now. I left the state, employment with the state, in May to become the executive director of Mediation Center which is affiliated with Hamline University. So Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I work there; Thursdays and Fridays I work down here in Rice County, I’m also the director of the Rice County Dispute Resolution program. So I go up to the cities and I’m down here, that’s why I can do this show on Fridays. WE: Ok, now who pays your salary up in the cities? EW: That is…it’s a 501C3, so were not being paid by Hamline University we’re being paid by people that we train to be mediators, people who are paying for cases that we do in mediation cases, family divorce cases, contract trainings that we do all of that kind of thing. WE: So lawyers pay you? EW: [Laughing] No. WE: No, I didn’t think so. EW: I knew lawyers would creep in here somewhere. WE: Well now, who pays you then? EW: Well as I said, it’s individuals. If we’re doing a training, for instance, we’re doing a thirty hour training for mediators, then the people that are taking that class would be paying us. For instance, a thirty hour training through Hamline or through the Mediation Center would be about eight hundred ten dollars. WE: And those people graduate from that training and where do they go and what do they do? EW: They do all sorts of things. They become qualified neutrals. Some of them are attorneys; some of them are social workers, psychologists, house wives. You name it, people who are interested with working with people in a conflict. WE: And where do they do that? EW: Oh just about anywhere. Attorneys of course in their practices, psychologists I think would be using it probably in their practice as well – it helps them understand the nature of conflict a little bit more – some of them may be going out, once you get the forty hour training, which is the family mediation training, then people do divorce mediations and what are called “post decree.” So you have a wide variety of people looking for different kinds of entry into mediation. WE: So if I wanted to do that. I would go up and take the forty hour course, I would pay them the thousand dollars or whatever it is. EW: Nine hundred ninety five for that one. WE: Ok, then I would come back to Rice County and I would submit a letter of completion to the court system? EW: Put out your shingle. What you do is you become a qualified neutral, if you want to you can go on the state roster and by being on the state roster two things happen. One is that you are agreeing to be under the jurisdiction of the court, the Supreme Court, with rules that are there which are rules 114; the other thing is that you would be able to accept cases from the court as well. So if you were doing family mediation you could have the judge refer a case to you or if the case was referred the attorneys would call and say, “Wayne, we’d like to have you as our mediator for this,” or you’d get a call from maybe the individuals who are in the divorce saying, “We’re going through a divorce, we feel that this might be the least expensive way to go and we’d like to hire you as the mediator.” WE: Is that a good paying job? EW: It can be, it depends on what you’re going to charge. WE: See now my impression, I had the privilege and the honor of having to go through mediation during my trip through the courts that a lot of people are familiar with and I won every case, you know; anyhow we had to go to mediation, directed by the court. To me it’s a stop at the trough of the lawyers because they got to be there, they represent you, you don’t have all that much to say, and then they go in and they talk privately with the mediator without the defendants or plaintiffs involved and then they talk with just the…and they go back and forth and the hours pile up and pretty soon they say, in my case, “We can’t come to an agreement on a settlement out of court, so we’re going to continue the court case.” There was another stop at the trough and people made thousands of dollars. EW: And sometimes that does happen. WE: Heck of a deal, forty hours! In forty hours I can get that little piece of paper and be a mediator like that? EW: You can be a mediator; the question is how much you’re going to charge. That depends on your time as a mediator. Starting off I don’t think you’re going to be able to get maybe two hundred fifty dollars an hour, which is what some people do. In your case, let’s say you went ahead and did it, you’d probably need to build up and you’d probably be needing to start a little bit less than that, maybe one hundred fifty, one hundred seventy five dollars an hour. WE: And people are out there going, “Oh my god, I’ll take that!” EW: Yeah, I’ll take that. But this isn’t constant; this isn’t something that you’re doing all the time. I mean, otherwise it’d be great, if I was earning one hundred and fifty dollars an hour, I’d be going wow! But I don’t. I do divorce mediations occasionally and I do a sliding fee scale because I know there are people out there that can’t pay or have very little recourse and don’t have a lot of money; so, I scaled it back based on their ability to pay. I go 150 to 200 an hour, usually is what I charge. WE: In that 40 hour course do you have an ethics code that is embedded in everybody’s…because you could, at 100 bucks an hour, 200 bucks an hour, say, “well, I think we need to talk about this more,” and stretch it out. EW: You could, but there is, as I said earlier, there is rule 114. In fact I am the chair of the Supreme Court Committee that deals with this. Any ethical violations by mediators come to us, and so we’re the ones that deal with those types of cases where somebody might feel that there was an overcharging by a mediator and that could certainly be something that would come to the committee and we’d have to look it over and decide based on the evidence, was there, and if there was, then we move forward with an investigation. So there are codes of ethics that mediators do need to follow here in the state of Minnesota. WE: Do you carry any weight though? I mean, can you actually find these individuals? Or dismiss a bill? EW: What we could do, one thing is certainly remove them from the roster, is the worst thing that would happen from our jurisdiction is that they would be kicked off the roster and would not be able to then continue as a mediator with being on the roster, which could effect their ability to get cases from the court. WE: well it seems kind of tempting for those that may be semi-retired to go up and pay that $1000 and do the 40 hour course, and then come down and hang your shingle up in your rec room, and send a little note out to all the lawyers in town and say, in the court, “hey, I’m available,” and if you can do a couple hours a week, it’s not taxable right? EW: Well, it is taxable, yes. Nice try. You do have to pay on that money. WE: They give you a 1099 when they pay you? EW: No, you have to report it. WE: So do you weed out people that you feel are just there for the fun of it? EW: Weed them out how? WE: Up at Hamline. If I wanted the 40 hour course do you look… EW: No, no. If you want to pay and take the course that’s up to you. I mean we’re not going to say, “you can’t take the course.” WE: so you could get little cards made up saying an official…EW: We give you little diplomas saying you’re a qualified neutral, that you’ve gone through the training through a mediation center. WE: Is it hard? Do you have to take a test? Do you have to fill out paperwork? EW: There’s a lot of stuff you have to do. 40 hours…it’s in a sitting. You’re there for 40 hours, or for 30 hours depending on if you want the civil. WE: Is there homework? EW: No, it’s all stuff that you’re doing right there. WE: Is there a test? EW: Not really. You could do it, but you’d have to be a good listener, and you have been so far. Those are the kinds of things that you’d be wanting in a mediator. Someone who can listen, who can work with parties, and we’re doing, here in Rice County, we’re doing a training in January for volunteers for our program so that would be the 30 hour training and we’re looking for people who are interested in being mediators and we’re doing that training about January 10th or so. It’s 30 hours. WE: What about a mediator, let’s say here in Northfield. Let’s say I went up and I took the 40 hour class. EW: Ok, we’re talking about the family one. WE: A thousand dollars, you know, the maximum. The one where you really know your 114’s. So I get that little diploma, and I can have little cards printed up – are there initials, like a CMT or something like that? EW: No, just “mediator.” WE: Ok, that’s too bad. EW: Sorry, you don’t get those. WE: Anyhow, would a person in a small town, and I’m going to call Northfield a small town, although I’m shocked at traffic in this town. Would it be a disadvantage, because are mediators supposed to not know the individuals that they’re mediating? EW: You know them, but you can disclose to the parties that you know individuals, and part of it is the self-disclosure of the mediator. For instance, if I was doing mediation with you and somebody else, and I knew you, then I would have to disclose that to the party and if the party still felt comfortable moving forward with the mediation, they could say “I’m ok with this. I understand the relationship and I’m willing to move forward.” Me as a mediator, if I was doing that and somebody said that, I would at least get it in writing that they said that it was ok. But typically you try to be careful about those types of things And we’ve got about twenty mediators that do mediations for the Rice County Resolution program and they’re people from Northfield and people from Faribault. Whenever we’re in court we always look down the list and see if we recognize anybody and if we recognize a certain person we say, “I can’t do that one,” so one of the other mediators will take it. WE: Who pays you for your court opinion? EW: Court opinion? Well, nobody really, these are all volunteers. WE: So when you’re working with the Rice County Court, do you ever have to testify? EW: No, we’re not allowed to testify. Mediators can’t be subpoenaed. WE: Oh. EW: We can’t be subpoenaed to testify because we’re neutrals. WE: Yes. Kind of like you’re married to the people. EW: Yes, sort of. I know what you’re saying. WE: You don’t mind if I take a break do you? EW: No, go ahead. WE: Eduardo Wolle is my guest here on KYMN Radio, pretty trusting discussion going on here right now. You know I play the devil’s advocate? EW: Oh I know, I know. I’ve watched you for many years. [At this point there is a commercial break.] WE: Never did understand that song, how about you Eduardo? EW: I do. WE: What is it about? I mean a key, like a kilo of drugs or something? EW: No, no, no. You know roller skate and the key. WE: Well, I know that. EW: I’m not going into the deeper meaning that you’re going into. WE: Yes, well that was the era back then and there. EW: True, true. It could be. WE: Two and a half minutes before it is eleven o’clock on KYMN Radio. Eduardo Wolle is my guest on part three. Normally we hang her up at eleven o’clock but let’s go to eleven twenty-five. EW: Ok, I’m game. WE: Because we’re… EW: News. WE: Well, yes. But we’re into your current life and what you do because it’s really a blur from the time that you were born to here. EW: [Laughing] I don’t think. How do I feel? WE: Have you ever laid in bed and just say to yourself, “God, what am I going to do with my life?” EW: What am I going to do when I grow up? No. WE: You’ve got so many interesting things that you’ve done with your life. I mean a lot of guys would be scared to quit a job and go on to the next one for two, two and a half years. EW: Especially with this pay. WE: Well yes, that’s a safe haven when you’re there. EW: I know, it is, it is. But, I like challenges and to me, where I was moving, was a good challenge. And so I felt it was worth it. WE: Ok now once again, what do you do during the day? Let me see if I remember. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday you’re at Hamline University and you run the Mediation Center and that’s where people come to learn how to be mediators. EW: Partially, that’s one of the things I do. WE: What else do you do? EW: Well, we do mediations of course. We do mediations. WE: On campus? EW: No, well we do mediations here at the center, typically divorce mediations. We also do contract training. WE: Why is Hamline allowing you space on the campus for what appears to be an independent enterprise? EW: Because that’s the affiliation agreement that Hamline and Mediation Center reached back in 1997-98. WE: And it’s a non-profit? EW: It’s a non-profit. WE: Except for the employees. EW: We’re all a non-profit. WE: Well you get paid don’t you? EW: Yes, but it’s still a non-profit. [Laughing] I’ll tell you about that. WE: I know about 501-3C’s, I’ve been involved in a few myself and they’re all good. EW: Thank you. WE: And we are going to have to come back because I want to hear about cases and not names and people. EW: Yeah, we can’t do that but I can talk about cases. WE: Yeah, I’d like to hear about what your biggest problems are and the court system. EW: Ok. WE: Ok, this is KYMN Radio, we’re from Northfield, Minnesota, we couldn’t be prouder. KYMN a friend you can count on. [At this point there is a break.] WE: Wayne Eddy, I remember playing Dwayne Eddy music on KYMN Radio and that theme that I used is Dwayne Eddy called the Rebel Rouser from about 1958. Any who, it’s six minutes after eleven o’clock and we’ve got to finish up with Eduardo because this is part four. EW: No, part three still. WE: Well ok, part three still. Let’s concentrate on your current position; we have a lot of messages we have to pass along too. First of all, can you give me an example of a typical mediation case in Rice County without naming names exactly what the problem was? Do you call them cases? EW: Yes. Well I can tell you different things because what we’ve done is we’ve also created a new process in court that’s not done anywhere in the nation. We get all sorts of different cases, we deal with conciliation court, mainly small claims court cases and these are all a wide range of cases dealing with all sorts of different things: businesses, neighbors, friends, all those kinds of cases. WE: Now, when you do that you’re relieving the justice system of a lot of time. And you’re not being paid, you’re volunteers? EW: Our people are volunteers. There are two paid staff people, myself and an assistant, Judy Solstad. We get our funding from Rice County, we get fifteen thousand from Rice County, we get some money from United Way; so, our total budget is from roughly about twenty, twenty-five thousand dollars is what we bring in. And then we get fees. WE: And a huge savings to the county I would assume? EW: Yes, and the court. WE: Ok, now conciliation court that basically is small claims and its bills to retailers and all kinds of things. EW: Small claims. Oh yes, it gets into all sorts of different things. I remember a case where neighbors were fighting over toys. I mean, you get into all sorts of things. WE: Toys? EW: Toys. The kids had exchanged toys and one of the toys ended up not working and one kid wanted it back because, you know, it was worth maybe about a hundred or so dollars and the other kid wouldn’t give it back; so, eventually the parents took it to court. I know that people are saying, “Well, gosh, why did they do that?” I guess when people are in conflict, the place that they look for to resolve those disputes is court. Well, what we’re trying to say is that there are other ways of trying to deal with this stuff other than going to court, either talk to the other party or moving with Rice County Dispute Resolution program. WE: Do you think most of them are based on principle or dollars? EW: It’s a combination. I mean, we see all sorts of different things where it’s interrelation which is maybe what’s driving the issue of the money. There may be something that somebody felt that they’ve been told something by the other party, there’s money involved, but it’s really based on the relation that the two people have. So sometimes you have to work on the relational part before you can get to the money part because the money part is only the tip of the iceberg. WE: I’ve once heard a lawyer say that, “The only people that have something to lose in a divorce are people that have something,” other than that, divorce is three hundred or four hundred bucks if there’s no property involved and if they both agree, boom, it’s over with. EW: Yes, and we’ve done those types of mediations where…I remember one that I did which was two hours; we just needed to work through, there were no kids involved, there was some property, what have you, but it wasn’t that much and saved them a lot of money. WE: When you mediate, do you have both parties in front of you at all times? EW: No, we sometimes move into what are called caucuses, where you talked about it a little bit, where the parties are separated so that either…there are all sorts of reasons for that kind of separation. Maybe the mediator wants to talk with a party individually or maybe the party doesn’t feel comfortable with the other one so they separate or one of the parties just wants to talk with the mediator because they want to give them some confidential information. WE: What if one of the parties is paranoid? EW: Paranoid, well… WE: You know when you want to go meet with the other person in secret, what are they talking about? [Wayne is impersonating the mind of one of the parties of a mediation case here]. EW: Well, I’ve not had that kind of case but we usually get something from the one party that says well you can tell them this and we go back and tell the other party this is what this party has told us that we can say to you and relay, “Blah, blah, blah.” WE: So you might get a lot of exercise? EW: Sometimes you get a lot of exercise going back and forth. That’s part of what works in trying to get a successful mediation. WE: We’re going to take a break and then when we come back I’m going to ask you your funniest one, your saddest one, your longest one, your shortest one; so you can think about that. EW: [Lauging] Ahh, ok. WE: We’ll be back with more with Eduardo Wolle right after this important time out. [At this point there is a commercial break]. WE: A little bit of Tony Orlando and Dawn, do you remember that? EW: Oh yes. WE: We’re back live and in color on KYMN Radio, the Wayne Eddy Affair, the extended version of our interview with Eduardo Wolle. Eduardo, when we took that brief break, we asked you to come up with your funniest, your saddest, your longest, and your shortest mediation in the history of your efforts either at the Rice County level or at… EW: Wherever. Ok, I can tell you divorce mediation, I had one that lasted ten minutes. After I gave the opening, which we usually do as mediators, which lays out information about how the process is going to work one of the things that we indicate, I learned from this one, I might as well say, that one of the things that we say is that this is a voluntary process and at any point and of the parties can leave; so, after I’d finished saying that, one of the parties said, “Good, I’m out of here.” So that was my shortest. WE: Did you still charge by the hour though? EW: No, I didn’t charge. No, they came, they saw, they left so that was it. WE: Ok. EW: The other ones I’ve done, one that really showed me the nature of how you transform people in conflict from people who are at each others’ throats and wanting to rip it out was a harassment mediation I did between two people, two people who had been involved romantically and were at loggerheads with each other, you know calling each other names and what have you and it was very tense with that one. When we finished we had come to an agreement and when I came out of the meeting room after I had written up the paper work, I was finishing everything up, they were out in the hall talking and they hugged. That to me showed that people can really transform from being at each others’ throats to realizing that we can work things out and we can talk it through and come to an agreement that will work for us. WE: And you call that a success? EW: I call that a success, but also mediation is a success almost all the time because as long as you are getting people in to talk with each other, it is a success, because people can just be so opposite. WE: Sure. Now, I asked for your longest, shortest, funniest, and saddest. Was your first one the funniest and shortest? EW: [Laughing] It was the shortest and it was quite an interesting one, that was a learning one. WE: Ok, then the second one here you talked about was heartwarming that it works. EW: Yes. WE: Ok, what about do you got a funny one? EW: A funny one? Boy, I can’t think of a funny one right off the top of my head because they are all, you know, they are all, when you’re talking about conflict, sometimes you can have a little humor in there but I can’t think of one that’s really funny. WE: Well, I’m thinking about a woman or a man that would say the other person there is very sarcastic and then have the other person there is zipping and zapping and being sarcastic. EW: Yes, no, you try to, when you’re looking at these, I can’t think of one that would be funny in that way. WE: Did you ever take one home with you? A sad one? EW: No, I tend to leave them at the door when you leave. I think about them afterwards after I’ve done them and if I do what’s called a co-mediation with somebody else, then we’ll analyze what went well what didn’t go well with that kind of a case. WE: Are these sessions recorded? EW: No, they can’t be. Everything is confidential in those sessions and it’s almost like a confessional in a way, if you want to put it into religious terms, because what you’re saying in there is confidential between the parties and the mediator. If I violate that and go out and start babbling and saying, “Well gosh in that mediation with Wayne, Wayne said blah, blah, blah,” they can take me to the review board. WE: Sure. And of course you mentioned earlier you can’t be subpoenaed. EW: No, we can’t be subpoenaed. That’s one of the things that they sign when we go through this. WE: Boy, that’s a real protector isn’t it? EW: It is because it protects the parties as well. They know that it’s confidential. WE: You indicated that anybody can be a mediator most more than likely a lawyer or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? EW: No, it’s anybody whether it’s a nurse an attorney. WE: So, let’s, there’s a lot of listeners might know me either personally or they might know me through KYMN Radio or whatever case it might be. EW: You’re going to ask that question aren’t you? WE: Do you think I would be a good mediator? EW: [Laughing] You’re an interesting character. You know…WE: Be honest. EW: I’m getting there to be honest. I’ve known you for a long time Wayne and sometimes you can be difficult and you’re a good listener but one of the things that you do in mediation is you really don’t give an opinion. Mediation is one where you’re listening to the person, you’re listening from them; unless you’re going to be an evaluative mediator then you probably would be a good mediator. Evaluative means that you look at their case and you say, “You know, I don’t think you have a good case here because x,y, and z,” you might be good at that. If you were a facilitative mediator working with the parties and bringing out some of the interests I think you might get a little more frustrated with that and I don’t know if you’d do well with that one but you know, you wanted me to be honest with you. WE: No, I got thick skin. Though I mean I would have to learn to say, “Well, how do you feel about that?” EW: Not necessarily. [Laughing] There are other ways of doing it. WE: Ok. EW: But you could probably do it. WE: And I did have another question and I forgot what it was. EW: Oh. Well maybe it wasn’t so thick skinned, huh? WE: No, no, no, I had it here and then it…It was a pretty logical question too. EW: You mean about the training or being a mediator? WE: Yes, I forget about what it was. That happens to me occasionally. EW: I do it too. WE: [Unclear] though, it was a good question I should have written it down. I should have wrote it. EW: You’ll remember. WE: We’ll take one break and come back and do a wrap alright? EW: Ok. WE: We’re talking with Eduardo Wolle on KYMN Radio. [At this point there is another commercial break]. WE: Good morning we’re on the Wayne Eddy Affair, we’re coming to a conclusion. Now Eduardo Wolle, you have been just a very interesting guest. EW: Thanks Wayne. WE: And I can see where you would be a good mediator because you know how to go along, get along, and get things done. EW: Thanks. WE: I tease you incessantly about being at the public trough and getting education, getting a job here, getting a job there but you seem to be real happy where you’re at right now. EW: Yes, I am. WE: And your daughter’s in college already? Isn’t that something? EW: Yes, it is and our son is at high school, he’s a sophomore. WE: And is he involved in anything? EW: Sports? Yes, he loves sports. He likes soccer. He’s been involved with soccer, basketball…WE: What’s his name? EW: Carlos. WE: Carlos? EW: Yes. WE: Carlos… EW: Wolle. WE: Wolle, Carlos. And then there’s Lolita. EW: Lolita. WE: I love that name that is so pretty. EW: [Laughing]. WE: Lolita. Wasn’t there a show about a Lolita about the 1950s? EW: There was a book by Nabokov. There was a book by Nabokov and there was a movie. WE: Wasn’t she kind of a risqué? EW: She was but we didn’t name her after that, we named her after my mother. WE: [Laughing] Oh yes, ok. EW: [Laughing] Nice try though. WE: So, if people want to get involved as a client of the system or maybe become a mediator, how can they get in touch with you? EW: They can call us at area code (507) 664-3522, here in Northfield. WE: Yes, 664-3522. EW: Yes. WE: And you are suggesting to me personally that I perhaps should save the thousand dollars and forget about it. EW: Actually Wayne, what I would suggest for you is why don’t you come and observe one? WE: Yes, here’s my question, [unclear] question. EW: Oh good. WE: In the conciliation court is it all paperwork, paperwork, paperwork? Half fax like in the court, just deal with the fax man? EW: Depending, if it’s mediation it’s a discussion between people but we have this new process that I told you about which is conciliation expediting. In that case, people present their case and we make a decision or we try to help them come through. WE: Eduardo, thank you. EW: Thanks Wayne. WE: Eduardo Wolle has been my guest on KYMN. [Transcribed 2015 by Rebecca Dau for the Northfield Historical Society]